Pandemic of Panic

As I munched the first burger I’ve eaten in years (homemade with relish and a fab side salad) in a small cafe in Glastonbury, I read with interest and article in the Daily Mail by Christopher Booker entitled ‘Pandemic of Panic’ (p14, Thurs 30/04/09 if you’re interested).

I was struck by so much of what he was saying and suggesting about the scares that we seem to endure on a regular basis. His basic premise (and I concur) was that they all seem to follow the same basic pattern:

What’s contributing to social breakdown?

Huge amounts of public money are being thrown at the wall of concern surrounding the impact on society of the breakdown in family structures. Although each independent initiative discussed here performs to an adequate standard in itself, without effective coordination the losers will continue to be the very people at whom this money and effort [...]

The glorious art of Social Inclusion (not!)

I don’t know what it is like elsewhere in the world, but here in the UK we have a policy of ‘Social Inclusion‘.  What this means in practice is that everyone has effectively been put into a blender together – brown, black, yellow, white, pink etc… and we’ve all be blended and now it’s all [...]